You know, hosts often wait for players for a long time. It's natural that they might want to go away from keyboard for a minute or so. I play on the multiplayer server often and never considered it a big problem to be honest. You wait a while and the host comes.

However, the server often doesn't kick disconnected players and that might be the reason of some "ghost games". Also, if you are not registered, your nick remains in the lobby if you get dc. I hope this will change.

Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by. - Garry Kasparov

I agree with this. Possibly also there could be some dedicated hosts (hosted by the wesnoth servers) that wait for players (but do not play themselves) and then run when filled.

Along this same line i was wondering if it would be possible to create a right-click menu button to allow a player to choose to have the computer take control. In long games, when i have to go temporarily, this would be a useful function. This would notify the other players in the round that i had temporarily left and the computer had taken over, and the computer would then play, like a normal ai, until i returned. This would make waiting for other players turns shorter and would mean players wouldn't hold up games if they have to do things during a session.

As a add-on developer this would be useful also to allow me to test campaign teams and units without playing them directly.

The_Gnat wrote:...if it would be possible to create a right-click menu button to allow a player to choose to have the computer take control. In long games, when i have to go temporarily, this would be a useful function..

Maybe i'm wrong, but i think every player (not only host) can droid her/his own side already now. The server command "droid [my own side] on/off" can be used by all players. The only thing you've got to do, if you need to be afk, is tell the others, that you are going to droid your side and will come back later(or better, in a team match: ask host to give control over your side to an ally).

Last edited by Zap-Zarap on March 17th, 2017, 9:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

.... concerning the original question of this thread, i had some other thoughts.Maybe it would be nice, to change somehow the chat window thing in the pregame screen, in that way, that it would be possible, to write a kind of "sticky" note there, that can be seen by all players, that join the (pre)game at anytime, so i could write something like "game will start in 10 minutes.." or such. As it is now, only players, that are already waiting can read that. Those, that join later, only see a blank chat.